Double Check — Publish Check

Check the essentials before you publish Double Check — Publish Check is a simple pre-publish checklist for WordPress. It helps WordPress site owners, administrators and publishers catch common omissions before a post goes live. Use it when publishing your own content or as a consistent final check across a multi-author WordPress site. If you work with writers, guest authors or contributors, Double Check — Publish Check gives you a quick way to see whether the essentials have been covered before publishing. Double Check — Publish Check checks:

• Title
• Content
• Featured image
• Manual excerpt
• Category
• Image ALT text

The checklist appears in the WordPress block editor and updates while you work. A check, not a gatekeeper Double Check — Publish Check is advisory. A missing featured image, excerpt or category might be a mistake. It might also be intentional. Double Check — Publish Check highlights what may have been forgotten, but it does not disable the Publish button, change the post status or force anyone to complete the checklist. The publishing decision remains yours. Useful for solo and multi-author WordPress sites If you run your WordPress site yourself, Double Check — Publish Check provides a quick final content checklist before you publish. On a multi-author site, the same checklist can help when reviewing drafts from different writers, contributors or guest authors. Editors and administrators can see common omissions without maintaining a separate publishing checklist or introducing a complicated editorial workflow. What does Double Check — Publish Check look for?

• Title - Checks that a title has been entered.
• Content - Checks for meaningful visitor-facing content rather than an empty post structure.
• Featured image - Checks that a valid featured image is assigned.
• Excerpt - Checks for a manual excerpt when the current content type supports excerpts.
• Category - Checks that a category other than the site's configured default category has been selected when categories apply.
• Image ALT text - Checks relevant images for missing ALT text.

If a check does not apply to the current content type, Double Check — Publish Check marks it as not applicable instead of showing an unnecessary warning. Small by design Double Check — Publish Check is deliberately small. There is no settings screen to configure, no content score to improve and no external service or account to connect. Double Check — Publish Check does not:

• block publishing
• change your content
• add frontend output
• create database tables
• schedule background jobs
• display advertising
• collect analytics or telemetry
• send your content to an external service

Your content stays in WordPress.

1. Install and activate Double Check — Publish Check.
2. Open a post in the WordPress block editor.
3. Open the Double Check — Publish Check panel in the editor sidebar.
4. Review the checks while you work or before publishing.

There are no settings to configure.

1.0.0

• First public release.
• Requires WordPress 7.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.
• Tested with WordPress 7.1.2.

0.4.7

• Improved translation support for plural checklist messages.
• Removed unused serialized content state from the block editor check.
• Updated release-readiness documentation and uninstall comments.

0.4.6

• Fixed meaningful-content detection when Gutenberg exposes emptied RichText attributes as objects.
• Ensured content returns to a warning immediately after the final meaningful block content is removed.

0.4.4

• Refresh featured-image ALT metadata after the featured image media interaction completes.

0.4.2

• Refresh Media Library attachment data after ALT text changes so the live check does not retain stale attachment metadata.

0.4.1

• Added live Media Library ALT-change detection.

0.4.0

• Prepared the plugin metadata and public documentation for WordPress.org release readiness.
• Updated the WordPress.org contributor identity and directory tags.
• Renamed the displayed plugin name to Double Check — Publish Check.

0.3.2

• Treat unresolved featured-image references as missing or unavailable rather than passing the Featured image check.
• Do not report an unavailable featured image as missing ALT text.
• Treat unsupported excerpts as not applicable when the post type does not explicitly declare excerpt support.
• Prevent unresolved media lookups from leaving ALT checks stuck indefinitely.